Cleaning a grayscale score?

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daphnis
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Re: Cleaning a grayscale score?

Post by daphnis »

William, have a look at this one: http://imslp.org/wiki/Suite_for_Violin_ ... _Woldemar)
That's the best I think we can do given the color source. As for the part, are you only after the violin part for the one movement? If so, I can probably typeset one in a few minutes rather than having to deal with a paste-up.
WilliamBunting
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Re: Cleaning a grayscale score?

Post by WilliamBunting »

to Kalliwoda

Thank you very much for the perfect version of the Bargiel Sicilienne, and for the instructions. I need a lot of practice. Now I can make a new violin part from the clean piano score.

As for the title page, it is patched together from the Faure cello Sicilienne title page and a Bargiel violin sonata.

What a wealth of scores must be lying in the archives of former German princes- think of Meiningen, Weimar...a long list. This is indeed an exciting time for amateur instrumentalists. We have come a long way. As a boy I remember the enjoyment of seeing a score of a wind ensemble piece of the (then) unknown Lachner in the window of Musica Rara in Great Marlborough street London, and discovering the parts of Reicha wind quintets in Westminster Central Music LIbrary.

Thanks to your guidance I look forward to contributing a few more useful scores.

WB/E
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Re: Cleaning a grayscale score?

Post by WilliamBunting »

Dear advisors

Could you please instruct a beginner in repair work? My Gimp "eraser" doesn't seem to work. Do I really need to buy photoshop? Is "Paint" any use?

http://erato.uvt.nl/files/imglnks/usimg ... _score.pdf

What is the best way to repair the (sello) tape damage in movt 3 (Dma) piano score? In my view, this is an excellent work in many arragements - pano duet, v vc p, v va p, fl vc p, ob cl p etc.

Regards
WB
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Re: Cleaning a grayscale score?

Post by daphnis »

What is the best way to repair the (sello) tape damage in movt 3 (Dma) piano score?
No adequate repair of this damage is really going to be possible. New scans of those pages from the same edition would be the best thing. At some point, depending on the level and type of damage, it would be more work to salvage something than the rewards. Perhaps if this damaged copy was scanned with a lower 1-bit threshold, the results could at least be visible as opposed to black splotches.
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Re: Cleaning a grayscale score?

Post by kalliwoda »

Maybe some others can offer suggestions for shareware programs. Photoshop is really very expensive - I still use my almost 10year old Photoshop 7, because an update would just be too expensive for the added functionality.

Re: Damage like the tape splotch on p.1 of your example: if its a single fault I would look for the hidden element (the cautionary violin clef) and e.g. copy and paste it from the system above. Obviously, a lot of work and not really worth your time if many pages have similar damage, and in my Photoshop 7 only convenient in b/w scans, in greyscale it would require much more time to correctly align.
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Re: Cleaning a grayscale score?

Post by WilliamBunting »

kalliwoda wrote:What I did:
Separate pages into single page files, open in Photoshop 7 (other programs will do), converted to greyscale, cropped.
Increased image size to 1200dpi (600 dpi may be sufficient), deskewed manually, chose a splitpoint for b/w conversion (180), resized to 600 dpi on A4, run a 2-point dust filter and converted to monochrome b/w (there is a program that deskews and filters automatically under windows: "ScanTailor"). Finally I removed manually a few specks. (7 min. per page)

You may also have a look at instructions Generoso gave me a while back to batchconvert SBB files:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4667&p=24812&hilit=neukomm#p24817
Dera Kalliwoda

Thank your detailed advice. I have got one work from ThUSB and uploaded it. It took a long time.

Method: with Windows 7 (also XP and Vista probably)
1 Open the work in DFG viewer. Note- avoid the temptation to click on the image you first see. Rather click on the text on the left. Then you get the DFG option.
Maximize the image size. Right click for options. Save as- type useful name. Leave as tif (can also use bmp).

2 Open MS Office. The picture editor comes up.
a. Choose image- brightness. Set brightness to 0 contrast to 70 and intermediate tone to 10 (this is not an English Language version so these are guesses) .

b. Use the image-trim function to trim off the dirty edges and DFG logo.

c Save

3 Right click and save to PDF -default.
Use PDF Direct to join the separate pages into one file.

4 Go to composer page and upload.

The main faults I can see are
a The background color is not white but off-white.
b The pages are irregular sizes.

Please give me your evaluation.

Regards

WB/K
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Re: Cleaning a grayscale score?

Post by WilliamBunting »

daphnis wrote:William, have a look at this one: http://imslp.org/wiki/Suite_for_Violin_ ... _Woldemar)
That's the best I think we can do given the color source. As for the part, are you only after the violin part for the one movement? If so, I can probably typeset one in a few minutes rather than having to deal with a paste-up.
Thank you Daphnis

I chose the Sici as a separate piece, because it's fairly easy and also manageable on both violin and viola, especially if a few ossia bits are added when the va would go into 5th pos.

If you really have the time I'd like to accept your kind offer.

Regards

WB
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Re: Cleaning a grayscale score?

Post by daphnis »

William, check the work page again. Violin part for the "Sicilienne" has been uploaded.
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Re: Cleaning a grayscale score?

Post by WilliamBunting »

daphnis wrote:William, check the work page again. Violin part for the "Sicilienne" has been uploaded.
Dear Daphnis


Thank you for the beautiful part. I look forward to trying it out.

Regards
WB
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Re: Cleaning a grayscale score?

Post by kalliwoda »

Unfortunately, the Etüden op.3 by Ludwig Göring are only 790x1050 pixel, and that translates to about 85dpi! There is little you can do from such a poor original to get a clear image. On the other hand, the Herzogenberg Legenden are in quite acceptable 1600x2050pixel resolution.
Now in the other tile-based zoom (if you click on the thumbnail instead of the title), you can see the full 400dpi resolution but have to collate 8-12 screencaptures in Photoshop for every single page, and that is really a lot of work!- I still hope, they finally come around to follow SLUB or SBB and offer high res pdf downloads rather than the other way around.
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Re: Cleaning a grayscale score?

Post by WilliamBunting »

Kallidoda and friends

I just uploaded Hofmann va studies and Arends concertino.

To save time I did not try to clean up the color. However, I learned one simple thing which is worth passing to any other beginner uploader.

If you are processing 20 pages it seems you can't put them together in one big file (bmp, tif) and do the color processing. Thus 20 times the work is needed.

However, you can do the trimming after making the big pdf file. This gives the file a nice uniform look and saves time.

So my revised procedure is:

Method: with Windows 7 (also XP and Vista probably)


Stage 1 Open the work in DFG viewer. Note- avoid the temptation to click on the image you first see. Rather click on the text on the left. Then you get the DFG option.
Maximize the image size. Right click for options. Save as- type useful name. Leave as tif (can also use bmp).
as usual. You now have a large number of tif or bmp files.

Stage 2: Open MS Office. The picture editor comes up.
a. Choose image- brightness. Set brightness to 0 contrast to 70 and intermediate tone to 10 (this is not an English Language version so these are guesses) .

c Save

3 Right click and save to PDF -default.
Use PDF Direct or similar to join the separate pages into one file.

** Use the image-trim function to trim off the dirty edges and DFG logo**

For example I took 5mm off the top left and right and 15mm off the bottom.

4 Go to composer page and upload.

Any comments on the Arends and Hofmann eforts?

Regards
WB
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Re: Cleaning a grayscale score?

Post by WilliamBunting »

Daphins and Kalliwoda

I have had another try at Richard Hofmann's 15 studies.

I used Gimp using this procedure:

Import pdf file, go to image - mode - index - 1 bit pallette -

Then save as bmp, convert to pdf, join with PDF Direct trim with PDF Edit 7 and upload to IMSLP.

The print -out is black and white but the staves are a bit irregular and fuzzy. Can this be improved?

Looking forward to your evaluation

WB
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Re: Cleaning a grayscale score?

Post by daphnis »

William, what source did you use for both of these?
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Re: Cleaning a grayscale score?

Post by carmar1791 »

WilliamBunting wrote:Daphins and Kalliwoda

I have had another try at Richard Hofmann's 15 studies.

I used Gimp using this procedure:

Import pdf file, go to image - mode - index - 1 bit pallette -

Then save as bmp, convert to pdf, join with PDF Direct trim with PDF Edit 7 and upload to IMSLP.

The print -out is black and white but the staves are a bit irregular and fuzzy. Can this be improved?

Looking forward to your evaluation

WB

No you can't improve with perfect results
You can convert to B&W in this way only if you have an high resolution image.
To have better result you have to convert your files to gray scale and after you can manually set contrast brightness.....
And keep your files in gray scale during conversion to pdf.
There is a trick to have quite acceptable gray scale files from low resolution color images , by using gaussian blur but it's long to explain.....

The problem is the resolution of the original image.

By the way your color pdf file is good but it's not perfect to convert it directly to mode - index - 1 bit pallette.

I think if you want acceptable results in short time scantailor is ok for this.
I used it of your pdf colour file and I had not too bad results.
I needed 30 minutes to have a clean B&W copy.

Greetings
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Re: Cleaning a grayscale score?

Post by kalliwoda »

William,
I agree with Carmar that this ThULB scan is not a very promising starting point for good results. The resolution is moderate at about 150 dpi, if you resize to the most likely page dimensions of about 23x30 cm. (the jpg's don't preserve the original page dimensions, they are usually lower dpi (72 or 96 dpi) for very large page sizes).

The main mistake you made is to convert directly to a b/w image of identical points of resolution.

If you try to convert such a greyscale or color scan, you should try to preserve the additional information of the scan by increasing the resolution of the scan (2x, even 4x if your computer can still handle the hugely increased filesize). Only then should you convert to monochrome, best if you choose a splitpoint for b/w manually - the automatic conversion has a split point of 50%.
Two additional methods to improve the results should be done at the higher resolution greyscale stage: First, you could deskew (rotate the image or parts of it for optimal alignment). Second, to smooth the ragged edges a filter to remove dust and scratches (set to 2-point) would help. In Photoshop the resulting image is still a type of greyscale file - try converting this to pdf. For smaller filesize you could to convert to bitmap, but that often gives inferior results.

Try the program Carmar suggested, ScanTailor, to do these steps automatically! It runs under windows.

(actually, you can find these tips in one of my posts earlier in this thread :wink: )
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